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Chapter 7: Irony.

As we step inside the room, it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to the gloom. All the light comes from amber orbs that hover a couple of meters from the ground and oscillate in the ever-changing air currents of the bars spherical shape.

It's hard to describe to people who grew up on planets how gravity works in space. Ever since gravity field generators were created 30 or so years ago, such pedestrian terms as 'up' and 'down' ceased to have any consequential meaning. This bar, for example, was a hollow sphere - yet wherever you walked inside the spheres hollow interior, 'down' was always beneath your feet. Even when you were standing on what, to a new arrival at the bar, would normally be referred to as the ceiling.

People sat squeezed into booths or stood in loose groups laughing and talking. In the centre of the sphere, a stage slowly rotated from left to right surrounded by swarms of hovering lights and sound projectors. A folk group played slow jangly tunes from a hodgepodge of instruments. An old man played jangling notes from a banjo embedded with dim flickering vacuum tubes.

'Defiantly has a rustic feel' I mutter to Abby as we walk from the entrance to the bar.

'Rustic?' Abby laughed as the banjo man opened his toothless mouth to sing. As the cacophony in the bar raised even higher Abby continued through her viber. 'I can almost smell the moonshine.'

'I wonder what happens if you try to order a chilled glass of sauvignon blanc in here...' I mused over the channel as I leaned on the bar and tried to get the bartenders eye.

'Oh nothing, I'm sure all of the hicks in here love a lil' glass of fine wine babe,' Abby joined me at the bar but kept her eyes scanning the room, the muscles in her throat contracting as they spelt out soundless words beneath her firmly closed mouth. 'In fact, I think I might have a cheeky glass myself...'

'Don't make me order that.' I looked at her beseechingly.

Abby shot me a cheeky grin then resumed her scan. 'Aww but its what I want...'

My shoulders slumped as the bartender stomped up. I cleared my throat self-consciously 'a beer please and, um, a glass of sauvignon blanc...'

The bartender blinked at me. 'Bless you mate. What did you say?'

'Sauvignon blanc? It's white wine... you know made from grapes?' I was fighting a losing battle, most people here had never seen solid ground let alone a fruit famously picky in its selection of growing conditions.

'Wine? Yeah, we got wine. Two secs.' The bartender thumped off again.

Abby seized my arm. 'Brakeman. We are go.'

'I, what? I've just ordered drinks Abby. Fuck's sake he's probably out there in the back now scratching his little head and trying to find you something that was once wine, wait a second.'

'Catch me up.' Aby vibed. The pressure on my arm released and I watched her push through the crowds towards a loose group of bald men in green jumpsuits. The back of each suit carried a holographic emblem of a striking eagle and a skull.

'There you go mate.' The bartender was back. He put a dusty bottle of what, surprisingly, actually looked like wine on the bar's counter. 'Don't get many requests for this, 'fraid its by the bottle.'

'Sure, sure,' I said distractedly as Abby reached the table. 'put it on my card.' I stuck my hand out flat palmed over the counter. The chip in my palm chirped happily and glowed green.

Abby was talking to one of the jumpsuits. He shrugged and pointed over the table to another of his companions. Abby nodded and walked to the new person, now standing at an angle of almost 90 degrees to the bar.

'She with you?' the barman asked me, pointing at Abby. 'She knows that lot are them dickheads who shoot aliens right?'

'Yup' I replied sipping my beer. 'You wana know the punchline?'

The barman looked at me carefully, putting the glass he'd been polishing back on the counter. 'Sure... what?'

I turned to him and sipped my beer as Abby punched the selected man hard in the face. 'She's an alien who shoots dickheads.'

The bark of a revolver going off rendered further conversation pointless. I leaned on the bar and watched my partner cripple a group of hardened criminals with the calculated precision of a surgeon dicing onions. The band stopped, then restarted playing a much more upbeat song as people on the peripherals of the fight started being sucked in. 'Yeaaawhoooo' the singer cawed 'we gotta fight y'all!'

'Aren't you guna help her?' The barman asked me, his eyes widening by the minute.

'She rarely needs it.' I sipped my beer and smacked my lips with an appreciative sigh. 'I'm more of a cosmetic feature.'

One of the jumpsuits flew so far in the air he fell from one gravity field into another, crashing into a table beside me. The tables angry occupants took out their frustrations on the unfortunate man, breaking a beer bottle over his head.

'Besides, someone has the catch 'The Bandit'.' I continued, watching carefully as the show gained even more participants.

'The Bandit?'

'The Bandit.' I confirmed nodding my head. 'They'll be shy. Looking for a quiet drink somewhere familiar. Chances are a large fight will be exactly the type of attention they'd prefer to avoid.' I stopped scanning the crowd and turned back to the barman, setting him at ease with a friendly smile as I left the final sentence unspoken inside my head. 'After all, they've just committed a murder.'

'How do you know it'll be him?' The barman frowned.

I sighed. 'My dear fellow, whoever said it was a him?' A flash of colour flickered past my peripheral vision. Seizing the wine bottle from the counter I twisted quickly and broke the bottle around a blond woman's head as she ran past me. She collapsed immediately and skidded across the booze slicked floor, an eagle and a skull tattoo on her exposed back.

I looked at the wine bottleneck in my hand regretfully. 'Shame, I heard this was a good year.'